Talent Challenge to Disrupt Businesses & Industries in Line with Digital Transformation
Author: Dr. Sonia Ben Jaafar
Publication: Fast Company
Even as most of the world talks about disruption in terms of the now—mobility, blockchain, connectivity— businesses are focused on the emerging innovations that will shape what’s next to will help them gain a competitive edge. We talked to ministers, C-suite executives, futurists, and technologists dominating today’s business in the Middle East – from enterprise tech, ICT, and cybersecurity to retail, food, and fintech, asking them the top innovation disrupting the industry they are in and how businesses should prepare themselves. They told us how technologies such as automation, edge computing, open API, extended reality, and low code/no code, among many others, are disrupting innovation-driven industries. And why businesses need to optimize costs, build workforce competencies, and focus on the dynamics of a digital-first world to lead with authenticity, empathy, and purpose.
We talked to ministers, C-suite executives, futurists, and technologists dominating today’s business in the Middle East – from enterprise tech, ICT, and cybersecurity to retail, food, and fintech, asking them the top innovation disrupting the industry they are in and how businesses should prepare themselves.
They told us how technologies such as automation, edge computing, open API, extended reality, and low code/no code, among many others, are disrupting innovation-driven industries. And why businesses need to optimize costs, build workforce competencies, and focus on the dynamics of a digital-first world to lead with authenticity, empathy, and purpose.
*Fast Company Middle East compiled these responses, which have been lightly edited and pared down for length.
While much of the attention is around generative AI, there are potential challenges they are introducing for regulation, and we are about to see an explosion in the applications of these tools to aid key tasks of planners and policymakers. Imagine, for example, a local government and citizens picking from an infinite variety of options for the design of a street as produced through AI.
I have been watching the space of rules-as-code: translating government regulations from paper to code to become machine-readable. For example, easier calculation of social benefits for citizens. Gone are the days of sifting through endless documents to understand the implications of a new benefits regime and its various rules and exceptions – a digital interface enabled by the underlying code can now make this a much more streamlined process.
Dubai Future Foundation aims to become a global platform for facilitating knowledge exchange and leading R&D efforts while serving as a think tank that informs decision-making in our futuristic government. Building human capital as the cornerstone of development is at the core of the foundation's mandate and is a key pillar of the R&D ecosystem we are building here.
Dubai has made great strides in carving a path towards a more innovative future, powered not only by digital technologies, such as AI, autonomous vehicles, and blockchain but also, crucially, by science and technology research. I urge businesses to constantly look for new opportunities, which can be facilitated by analyzing global trends and industry insights.
We are shifting from globalization to nobleization, where companies are under increasing pressure to take ethical stances and only do business with nations and other companies that share their moral and ethical values. This "moralshoring" across digital and physical infrastructure, supply, and value chains could have huge implications, fundamentally altering how the business operates. Hard choices are looming where the future of profit may be purpose.
We must reimagine competition, recalibrate value, reboot digital transformation, and redefine innovation. We must do it as part of new, generative, multi-stakeholder ecosystems based on radical transparency. The future for business lies at the nexus of the green, blue and circular economies, which is going to require massively more and different data, advanced technologies, and collaborative platforms to capture and share it.
The world's understanding of the metaverse will evolve in closer alignment with our vision – as a link between physical and digital worlds that combine into a single, seamless experience. As technology becomes more prevalent and powerful, embracing our unique human characteristics will be the most valuable skill organizations need.
To optimize potential, diversity and inclusivity will play a key role. No matter how advanced technology becomes, humans will continue to play a critical role. When I think of a breakthrough innovation, it's not technology, it’s humans.
Such experiences are valuable for two reasons: they build an emotional connection with customers beyond the typical touchpoints and positively influence their perception of the brand. Both factors make customers much more likely to purchase a brand’s products in the future.
Businesses can prepare for the future by identifying opportunities and adapting to challenges. Qatar Airways places great importance on innovative and resilient business growth.
A renewed emphasis on sustainability, inflation and supply chain security, and talent development will be vital. With the region hosting both COP27 and COP28, businesses will have to build their environmental credentials as governments, and consumers hone in on responsible, purpose-driven brands to define preferences and drive growth. More businesses will need to place their ESG processes at the core of their strategy.
Many CEOs and CIOs are taking bold steps to create the right balance between their traditional business and their digital future, to capture new sources of revenue and react to rapidly changing market conditions.
Looking ahead, businesses must look at people, technology, and processes to succeed. Undoubtedly, the dynamics of a digital-first world will require businesses to lead with authenticity, empathy, and purpose.
This can be implemented by leveraging new technologies like AI and AR and developing data-driven strategies to deliver the best human-centric services and products that meet the consumers’ ever-changing needs.
COP28 will contribute to accelerating the sustainability agenda in the region. To stay ahead of the curve in this fast-changing environment, using the power of technology and green sciences to deliver bespoke products and experiences that are efficient, safe, and respect the environment is crucial. This is our ambitious L’Oréal for the Future 2030 program.
Enterprises must also define the target spectrum matching their needs as gaining clarity on the target spectrum adds focus to the early deployments for tying together network, device, and use case strategies.
Using the data generated from our infrastructure, cities can optimize themselves and become more efficient and livable daily. When applied to mobility, train lines operate with fewer delays and better customer satisfaction. And factories can be optimized virtually, leading to tremendous capacity and productivity increases.
The business environment will be more uncertain in 2023. Businesses must adapt to this environment, yet they must also continue to address the most pressing issue facing humanity: climate change. With COP28 coming up in the UAE, 2023 will be a catalyst for companies, governments, and people in the Middle to embrace sustainable growth and leverage the technologies that will have a positive and sustainable impact on our planet.
The next generation is already in the metaverse. There will be entirely new industries that have yet to make their grand entrance. When they are ready to do so, we will welcome them with open arms.
Prepare for disruption, think about being disrupted, and look to disrupt yourself. Reskilling and up-skilling talent across the business to prepare for an evolving future is a corporate strategy that will ensure companies not only survive but they will thrive in the future.
It’s important that businesses, governments, and individuals work continuously together to build resilience and build capabilities to be more agile and resilient. Also, making better use of technology and innovation for better business continuity and sustainable development.
The UAE is creating an environment where companies that implement advanced 4IR technologies can thrive. We are promoting sustainability across industries. Digitalization is a key pillar in our strategy, and we are diversifying our businesses to be more holistic in our approach to sustainability.
My advice would be for businesses to adopt agile methods, implement future-ready systems and create a workplace environment where people can thrive and innovate. This will be crucial to meet universally important sustainability targets and achieve business resilience in a dynamic economic environment.
And with this new attitude toward the industrial metaverse comes the opportunity to drive a deep technological shift as a business change initiative.
Prepare to protect against the evolving threat landscape. In 2023, boards will want more data-driven, quantified plans for risk reduction. The challenge will be for CISOs to demonstrate that they are getting the biggest risk buy down for every dollar they spend. Arbitrary metrics and qualitative assessments will not be enough. As a result, there will be more of a focus on empirical evidence driven by data.
They enable institutions such as museums to completely transform experiences and allow them to achieve their main objective, which in our case, is to inspire and empower people to build the future they want to inhabit.
In 2023, businesses must prepare to become adopters and pioneers of emerging technologies. Embracing disruptive trends will help companies gain a distinct advantage as sectors evolve. We are already seeing businesses in Dubai leading the way in adopting disruptive models and new technologies. Additionally, businesses must use all the tools to implement ESG strategies effectively, especially technology to enable simulations, measuring, and reporting.
As the lifeblood of any consumer business, payments present an enormous opportunity to maximize revenue growth. This can be as simple as unlocking new payment methods to meet evolving consumer preferences such as BNPL or digital wallets to optimize the checkout process, utilize AI to guard against fraud, and empower businesses to drive up conversion and authorization rates.
Having closer engagement with consumers is no longer optional but a requirement for business survival. Businesses today should invest in technologies such as AR, which provides them with a medium to offer consumers refreshed experiences, cater to their evolving needs, and impact their business growth.
The global supply chain issue remains unresolved, while inflation will curtail consumer spending across the region in 2023.
Therefore, retailers will need to keep strengthening their supply chains. Sustainability will be a central theme in 2023. Efforts like greening the supply chain and choosing sustainable products allow retailers to align with customer demand and national green commitments.
We expect mobility tech to make rapid strides, creating further disruption to conventional models. Using data and technology to manage waste, mitigate food shortage and overall carbon footprint will be key focus areas in the coming year.
Businesses must optimize costs, build workforce competencies and leverage technologies for gaining competitive edge in the market. The regional market is likely to undergo more consolidation and create growth opportunities for better prepared players.
The future workplace necessitates businesses to not only accelerate their HR digital transformation by adopting employee-first digital processes and technologies but mandates leaders to prioritize data-driven decision-making – for their talent or business, in general.
There will also be a push to consolidate the management of applications through Kubernetes platforms with all the flexibility, speed, cost-effectiveness, and security needed to ensure success in a cloud-neutral environment.
Every organization is struggling to find kubernetes, data analytics, and machine learning specialists, as these are some of the most in-demand skills in IT at the moment. In 2023, organizations will need to hire more generalists and fewer specialists, even in critical roles, and train them in areas where skills need to be developed. This will be far more efficient for the IT organization in the long run.
The region suffers from skills gaps in technology fields. While many government initiatives have been devised to solve this problem, many may take years to bear fruit. In the here and now, enterprises that want to build an Everyday AI culture can look to their talent pool.
The challenge is driving the AI program forward while delivering an employee experience that can attract and retain the right skills to make it happen. One way of doing this is to appoint citizen developers — non-technical staff who build AI solutions using low-code platforms.
During the year, organizations will experience an increased frequency of ransomware attacks with new tactics, and those that aren't prepared will make headlines that devastate their business and reputation.
As ransomware and other cyber threats continue to evolve, the need for adequate security solutions has never been greater.
It is essential for security providers to create products that are easy to use and implement, regardless of a company's size. Additionally, sophisticated security technologies should be available as services so businesses of all sizes can protect themselves against these ever-changing threats.
Businesses have been focusing largely on customer experience transformation. However, many of these initiatives aren't reaping the expected results, largely due to a lack of focus on the operational transformation that connects the customers and core business. In the year ahead, organizations should focus on operational transformation initiatives. Moreover, businesses have also invested heavily in adopting many software solutions, which has fragmented enterprise users. They should now revisit their tech stack to have a unified user experience.
As you're not financially tied to a monolithic tech stack that forces you to behave as it intends, you can constantly reconfigure according to your customer's needs and expectations – and even potentially lower your TCO. It provides unrivaled flexibility and scalability.
Companies must invest in upskilling the workforce, providing a flexible working environment, and embracing AI and automation. If they can now build all of these on a client-centric model of success, with multi-level, multi-channel, and personalized, digitally enabled experiences, they will emerge stronger. Companies will also need to take the lead in reducing their environmental impact.
The publishing of any data, however easily obtained, will be seen as proof of a breach, including simple information obtained via open-source intelligence (OSINT). This is especially true when a named threat actor claims responsibility. It's the ultimate, undefendable attack for 2023.
In 2023, businesses should prepare for the next-gen attacks by "going back to the basics." While there have been many new cyber security solutions to protect the cloud and remote workers, attacks still prey on security basics. These include asset, vulnerability, configuration, patch, identity, and privilege management flaws. If organizations can double down on performing these disciplines well, then many attacks can be mitigated by simple cyber security basics.
Through intelligent automation, whether in utility services, oil and gas, transport networks, or other sectors, we will be able to witness massive benefits in minimizing energy expenditures, while also giving business leaders deeper insight into their operational performance. Cloud and AI will increasingly continue to support innovation and disruption within industries.
Businesses who are not accelerating digital transformation are already falling behind as we witness technology become the cornerstone of a company’s operations. As such, conversations in the boardroom should increasingly focus on how emerging technology can be employed to accelerate business operations and to drive progress and impact.
How should businesses prepare themselves: New digitalization strategies will help companies accelerate their transformation and ensure long-term business resilience during volatile periods.
Companies that take effective action to boost the efficiency of today's assets and plan effectively for future technologies will prosper as their assets run safer, greener, longer, and faster.
Businesses must act as agents of innovation. The more businesses accept and align with the win-win reality of sustainability and business success, the greater the frequency of sparking ground-breaking ideas and implementing solutions that uplift the world.
While these innovations have the potential to create new growth opportunities and connect the world like never before, it does come with increased risks. Businesses are now exposed to new and sophisticated cyber threats. As more data and workloads go digital, the likelihood of cyberattacks will increase.
Today, every business is in the cybersecurity business, and organizations must understand that if they do not act proactively, it is only a matter of time before a cyberattack happens. Organizational security awareness is what businesses should look into.
In 2023, we will see more organizations explore how hybrid cloud can play a key role in advancing their sustainability objectives. Business leaders are set to place a larger focus on improving energy efficiency across their entire IT operations without sacrificing security or performance.
Without the right talent, organizations cannot get very far. In the year ahead, there must be a laser focus on developing the type of cloud talent needed to execute a robust hybrid cloud strategy while leaning into the expertise of ecosystem partners.
We all have a role to play in the push toward a healthier tech-human balance. However, the real changemakers will be the businesses behind the technologies we use every day.
Every company asking us to download their app, check out their website, play their interactive game, or watch their latest ad must ensure that ethics guide the way forward. But to achieve this better balance, we'll first need to toss out the idea that progress means more tech at all costs.
5G will expand the cloud further, putting ubiquitous computing into increasingly hard-to-reach areas and creating a new paradigm for connected applications. AI and quantum computing at scale will create a new computing paradigm with greater precision, speed, and scale applied to computational-based problem-solving that will open new doors in scientific discovery.
Having more countries focused on bolstering their agricultural production instead of relying on imports or a few megacorporations to lead the way builds resilience to external shocks. This is a new world where agri-food-tech innovation is more localized and distributed, and solutions will come from the people who need them most.
Businesses can embrace the shift to decentralization as an opportunity. Exciting new technologies and business models will allow businesses to thrive in this new paradigm. For example, open innovation strategies can be turbocharged by using smart contracts to share and ensure the fair use of IP. ReFi (regenerative finance) can direct resources to regions and solutions currently under-ventured.
In 2023 businesses need to think outside the box and focus on offering “value added" to their consumers. The world of e-commerce is challenging, and everyone's bottom lines are affected by ever-increasing consumer acquisition costs. We need to learn to pivot to make it work going forward.
Blockchain technology and its ability to reimagine reward and attribution structures through quadratic funding and other regenerative funding and governance strategies is likely to become a huge catalyst for innovation with the potential not so much to disrupt business or industry but to accelerate the ideas poised to have the biggest impact.
Using new technologies is more about the investment in people learning to integrate them into their regular operations. Having a group focus on understanding how the companies in Web3 space involve the community in their decision-making process and how DAOs manage governance will provide a platform for the future of larger industry innovation and reward structures.
As 2023 will likely be very hot -- again, fueling drought, crop damage, and reducing yields -- agritechs providing cost-effective/low-water solutions will increase. Investors will turn more to plant science companies to address heat and reduced fertilizer supplies, and those companies' valuations will increase. More than ever, sustainable food growth will be crucial.
We expect businesses to control costs tightly and reassess business models to ensure sustainability. In tougher global economic times, relationships will be key. On the one hand, customers need to be kept happier than ever. On the corporate side, partnerships and scale will be important in the food sector, and we will likely see increased M&A.
Also, the 3D construction printing (3DCP) technology is leveraged to accelerate the construction process.
Research should be undertaken in various fields and disciplines to make breakthroughs. Metaverse is another big jump in technology. Merging AI and metaverse can produce breakthrough results to drive the next phase of innovation in manufacturing, retail, healthcare, and smart cities.
Talking about business preparation, we must remember the milestones and obstacles we consistently face. Hence, leaders should retain humanity, modesty, positive thinking, and flexibility to achieve this goal. In addition to that, companies must be designed to acquire talent. By laying out expectations and the output that teams must create more explicitly, employers can help reframe how people think about productivity.
Businesses should be wary of fiscal challenges during 2023, and a focus on better efficiencies should take center stage. These could be achieved through a stronger focus on sustainability. For example, by betting on a more sustainable supply chain, most companies will create arguably unexpected efficiencies on all fronts.
In 2023, we will see products have multiple functions, aiming to reduce hyperconsumption and be more environmentally friendly and sustainable.
In our line of business, investment in R&D is key, and this year we have invested heavily to try to stay ahead of the curve, creating products that will be able to respond to the growing complex demand of the consumers. The market for consumer goods remains very competitive. Businesses should be prepared to invest in innovation and not only focus on "replicas”.
Companies will have content AI teams like they had SEO and video and social media departments. Also, it won't be a home run; the search engines and social media algorithms will have their ranking system to identify AI-generated content.
Be alert for macro and microeconomic factors. Smart planning – focus on your own business and products and continue to create offerings that suit where this region is going.
2023 will present a challenging economic climate with an increasing cost of capital, so I believe businesses should prepare themselves by being more cost-conscious and bottom-line driven. This is especially important for young companies and startups.
Unlike in the past couple of years, most startups cannot depend on a constant stream of external capital anymore and need to be self-sustainable from the beginning.
The exciting prospect is the potential for various Defi services that can be built on top of the tradeable real estate tokens, potentially unlocking further value for investors from the underlying real estate assets.
Businesses must be prepared to face many challenges where capital is hard to come by. Rising commodity prices due to geopolitical tensions, global supply chain disruptions, and costly borrowing due to higher interest rates can seriously affect operations.Investing in innovation, technology and talent will also help businesses take advantage of any economic upturns that come their way.
This creates huge implications for the skills and talent businesses require for the future and will cause shifting talent pools and reskilling and upskilling in most organizations. So ongoing learning opportunities to grow and progress should be essential to any organization's offering in 2023.
Business leaders must prepare their organizations and people for the changing nature of work. Organizations that rethink, reshape, and reinvent themselves and their talent will be best placed for a resilient and sustainable future. When an organization ensures that its talent is ready with the knowledge, skills, and attitudes to adapt and deliver, technology and any challenges that come with it are less of a disruption and more of a catalyst for success.
It is incredibly exciting how blue is emerging as the new green as far as global sustainability is concerned. Combining environmental insights with real-world improvements should be the goal for businesses and governments.
Blue carbon should be incorporated into the sustainability kit of organizations, be they public or private, and it should become a crucial element of their strategies.
AI engines will write code. As low-code/no-code platforms continue to enable the technology behind these innovations, we'll see more maturity, more time savings, fewer errors, and faster development.
We can expect creative sales offers to secure longer-term contracts, but buyers, beware. Review and reevaluate your contracts on any subscriptions often to ensure you still need them. Being mindful of what you are subscribed to gives organizations more flexibility regarding renewal time and stops you from buying more than you need.
But it also creates more risk. Adversaries were previously more limited by having to create extraordinarily boutique OT cyber attacks for specific organizations. Now they can also create threats that can be more broadly employed against a range of organizations.
For industrial companies, executives need to align on what OT risk scenarios they want to focus on. Executives should consider what kind of events they want to prepare for as a company. Is it ransomware that impacts the OT networks and attacks safety systems? Once that is done, the security staff can carry out their jobs effectively and advise on the best approach and security systems needed to mitigate those risks.
Subscription-based car rental services are one of the industry's fastest-growing trends, as they offer a more convenient and flexible way to rent cars.
The secure services edge market is proving that a combination of cloud access security broker, zero-trust network access, and secure web gateway in a single platform is the most forward-looking approach to securing remote workers and protecting data across the modern enterprise infrastructure.
We expect targeted attacks to be much more personal in the coming year. Already, we see attackers steering away from targeting official work emails to trap their victims. There is currently very little tech coverage to give visibility into what's happening to enterprise data and little control over this surface (which is easiest to exploit). As a result, user error and account compromises will become more pronounced.
I also expect the emergence of trends toward consumer digital consent management. Any organization that holds personal information on its customers must adopt a culture that confers appropriate ownership rights on those customers.
We are poised for success if we adopt the right digital strategy and investments. Leaders across all functions now need to pay attention to tech trends, and their involvement will help steer the right investments that will ultimately reap the rewards for the entire organization.
In vertical farming applications, AI-driven solutions will facilitate farm management automation, crop cycle optimization, disease detection, and water and energy efficiencies. The result is an enhancement in the economic viability of vertical farming and accelerated deployment of smart vertical farming systems.
Like many sectors, the agritech sector will face a challenging 2023 with rising production costs and high inflation rates. However, companies can best prepare by focusing on optimizing internal efficiencies. For example, at World of Farming, we put our efforts into crops that provide optimal gains to drive profitability and help provide stability amid prevailing economic conditions.
Frugality is the quality every business needs to adopt in the current global macroeconomic scenario. Businesses need to forecast more accurately and have the agility to reduce spending inefficiencies. This will also filter out a lot of businesses that still need to be built on strong economic and product fundamentals.
Businesses must focus on process efficiencies, increased automation, and digitization to reduce manual overheads. In 2023, we will see a shift in the mindset of "growth at all costs" as investors focus on revenue retention, core unit economics, and technology.
High inflation rates, increasing energy prices, and rising raw materials costs have caused all businesses to reevaluate processes. Nevertheless, the challenging circumstances have motivated industrious individuals to create business opportunities within the food segment. However, that is not without risk – and currently, businesses need to minimize risk as much as possible.
Another top trend shaping the industry is consumers making more conscious choices about where they purchase food. For example, they want to know where the food has come from, whether the packaging is recyclable and how the company treats its employees. All of this matters to the modern consumer, and companies that embrace this level of transparency, and leverage technology to capture and share this data, will be more resilient.
F&B businesses, in particular, can prepare themselves by embracing technology to enhance operations, such as contactless order processing and offering various delivery options and dine-in capabilities.
Banks, fintech, and other businesses should not only learn more about the current and upcoming regional open banking regulations and practices to be market ready but should also ensure that they have the right processes, tools, and measures in place across departments to benefit from the technology. This is the time to get ahead and reap the benefits of open banking before other players catch on.
Undoubtedly, those factors served as the real test of corporate values and purpose. Companies will be judged on how they respond to this period of disruption, and only those who take the challenge to innovate will survive long-term business resilience.
A fundamental shift towards a more resilient and flexible food supply chain is needed to maintain business operations and ensure food security. Adopting a plant-based protein diet may lead to a more resilient and healthy supply chain.
Having a virtual dimension is going to demand a lot from leaders and businesses, who will have to navigate in a divided workspace. One size will no longer fit all. It becomes harder to be a leader because everything will be hyper-individualized.
The past two years have exposed the vulnerability of global supply chains, quantified by $4 trillion in revenue losses from disruptions in 2020 alone. Technologies that future-proof supply chains -- robotics, drones, third-party aggregators, IoT, cloud-based and real-time centralized tracking and information systems – will gain significant momentum over the next few years.
Energy management will be another key theme. Winning innovation in the energy industry will focus primarily on decentralizing supply to be closer to end consumers and less reliant on inexistent or inefficient centralized grids: off-grid, mini-grid technologies, or lease-to-own solar models.
It is now becoming evident that the global recession is almost here, and it will impact our lives and businesses. The hospitality business owners must be prepared to manage price hikes; demand reduction — retaining the customers, offering them more value for the same amount of money; increase in delivery orders and supply difficulties — better diversify your suppliers' list to catch up with the availability of whatever it is you're selling.
We are looking at a future that leverages the power of on-demand transportation to build a seamless mobility ecosystem that reduces dependence on private cars and offers better access to shared, electric mobility built around public transport.
A critical pillar for businesses will continue to be sustainability. As environmental awareness continues to rise, people will likely adopt more sustainable transport habits in 2023. In the ride-sharing industry, that means working closely with the public sector on the right policies, legal frameworks, and charging infrastructure initiatives to make the transition to EVs easier and more attainable for drivers.
As the industrial OT environment converges with the IT environment, there is an opportunity to pervasively deploy AI / ML and virtualization technologies to move towards a self-optimizing plant of the future.
Companies are now expected to have business continuity plans that are more agile, flexible, and sustainable due to the industry's shorter cycle times and supply chain disruptions brought on by geopolitical and economic uncertainties. Businesses must also place a high priority on both attracting and retaining talent, as well as developing an inclusive workplace culture. Digitalizing the workforce is another important trend that has emerged and will continue in the long run.
The past few years have shown the absolute need to be forward-looking while maintaining the discipline and flexibility to pivot when needed. We foresee the continued growth of SMBs throughout the year, supported by major campaigns like our LoveLocal, which helps bring these SMBs to the consumer.
Core technologies like business messaging and conversational commerce, allowing direct interactions with the consumers, will remain critical, as will the surge in usage of tech like AR filters that help consumers interact with businesses in previously unseen ways.
Global markets go up and down. It is still being determined how long the global recession will last; sooner or later, it may affect the MENA market too. Therefore, we have a moderately aggressive forecast of growth for 2023.
In 2023, we aim to grow along with the market while keeping a very close eye on expenses to avoid the cash flow gap. However, the current capital flow is booming the MENA countries' economies, and the region is expected to grow significantly.
AI-based GIS solutions in different industries will soon be deployed across all large and mid-size organizations. The growth rate of AI-based GIS solutions is exponential, and this is just the beginning.
We expect to see increased adoption, investment, and global spending on technology. Most of us will work alongside smart machines that will improve work operations while cutting costs. All companies should prepare their employees and provide the infrastructure, resources, and support to empower employees as AI takes sectors and industries by storm.
IT vendors and equipment partners will be more transparent in reusing hardware (circularity) to move the needle with the sustainability processes.
In 2023, we will see multiple instances of artificial intelligence used by some individuals and organizations to achieve unethical and socially destructive objectives. Industry, governments, academia, and NGOs will come together to begin hammering out a framework for ethically and responsibly governing AI to mitigate potential harm.
We will see a noticeable shift in how companies leverage multi-cloud architectures. We will see a big move toward new multi-cloud frameworks such as sovereign clouds, local zone clouds, zero-carbon clouds, and other novel cloud offerings. This will create a path toward more private and edge cloud applications and services, ushering in a new multi-cloud operating model.
AI will enable more personalization so products can be created and cater to customers' needs. Customers could personalize every aspect of the products, from hair concerns and fragrance to ingredients and even printing their names on the bottles. This makes the consumer feel special and increases customer engagement and sales for the brand.
The metaverse is still in its early stages. Nevertheless, businesses should continue to keep a pulse on this area. The metaverse will continue heightening the shopping experience by creating a more immersive experience. Virtual try-on is also still improving. Although this trend came to light years ago, it will continue to enable brick-and-mortar customers and native online shoppers to meet in the middle.
Companies can easily subscribe to AI models and eliminate the need to create and manage a model's life cycle. Also, digital and synthetic twins take the spotlight. Through digital and synthetic twins, the simulation of complex problems will be a focus in the analytics lifecycle to help companies prepare for any consequential and disruptive events in the future.
Companies must ensure IT infrastructure that is strong and flexible enough to integrate emerging technologies in close alignment with business processes. For me, 2022 was the year of reimagining business models and identifying and evaluating operational risks and gaps. 2023 is the year every company needs to implement its technology investments and strive to use solutions collaboratively instead of viewing them in a supplementary role. They must focus on upskilling and reskilling, digitization, and sustainability.
We believe hydrogen trains combined with green hydrogen generation are a revolution in rail transport, as it represents a genuine economic and clean alternative to diesel and is available now.
Addressing climate change requires a sustained economic and social transformation: we must change the way we generate and consume energy, the way we transport people and goods, the way we invest in and finance growth, and even the food that we grow and consume.
There won't be an unlimited treasure chest of money to devote to
cybersecurity in 2023, so it's important to be intentional about where to invest. Currently, every IT investment decision is also a security decision. As attacks against users increase, it's crucial to have security baked into people's PCs and printers from the hardware up – so they can easily prevent, detect and recover from attacks.
There is an ocean of security concerns to be resolved, so determining which areas put the firm at risk will be critical. Identify the biggest risk areas within the firm, know where it is most likely to be attacked, and know how much you can invest into protection.
AI-powered hyper-personalization will enable retailers to attract, retain and maximize consumer value, while the advancements of AI-ChatGPT will enable a superior level of AI-driven customer support and chat commerce.
Finally, the supply chain will be a top priority; leveraging decision augmentation, AI-assisted buying, merchandising, and replenishment will aid retailers in getting the assortment and inventory availability on point for their customers.
In 2023, the UAE will host COP28, bringing regional sustainability efforts to the forefront. To that end, businesses must consciously align with national green energy, net-zero emissions, and sustainability goals. Businesses can undertake in-house sustainability initiatives and explore external impact opportunities. In 2023, companies must truly walk the talk.
In 2023, businesses must enhance their readiness which, as often as not, boils down to getting the basics right. That notion applies
across growth stages and sectors. Such fundamentals must be upheld in cost planning, go-to-market strategies, or tech adoption. A strong foundation is a business's first line of defense against challenges such as the projected recessionary pressures in 2023.
